 In this episode of Mind Pump, we wanted to talk about techniques that you could do at home that are actually extremely effective at building muscle, at building strength. You know, working out at home can be tough because you don't have heavy weights and everybody knows that heavy weights is the best way to build muscle. But there are two genuine techniques of training that have tremendous muscle building effects regardless, I mean regardless, even if you are advanced. Now one of them is an old technique called isometric training. Isometric training has tons and tons of literature supporting it in terms of muscle building, muscle fiber recruitment, getting people to get stronger. It's just most people do it wrong, so we talk about how to do it right in this episode. We also talk about something called blood flow restriction training, restriction training, or occlusion training. Occlusion training is a more recent invention, or I should say it's been used more recently, although it's been around for a little while. Tons and tons of science supporting it. It actually builds muscle in similar ways to heavy lifting. Now the cool thing about isometrics and occlusion training or BFR training is they don't require heavy weights at all. Isometrics require no weights. BFR training you could do with resistance bands or like 10 pound dumbbells. When you combine them both, you get exceptional, exceptional results. Now in this episode, we also talk about how Adam is going to be doing a free mobility webinar. I want to make sure I mention that site because we've never taught a class online for people. This is the first time we've ever done that. You can go to mindpumpwebinar.com, sign up, and watch Adam teach a mobility class. But nonetheless, in this episode, we actually give you a full workout on how you can combine isometrics with occlusion training or BFR training for maximum amazing results. By the way, we have a occlusion training guide that teaches you how to do this properly because that requires a little bit more instruction. Now that guide is very inexpensive. We normally sell it for $27, but because we're doing this episode and we haven't talked about that guide in a long time, we actually wrote that guide about four years ago, we're going to give it to you for $13.50. We're going to take it and make it 50% off. Here's how you get the BFR or occlusion training guide. Go to mapsbfr.com. That's MAPSBFR.com. Use the code BFR50 for the discount. Again, that'll give you 50% off that guide. It only makes it $13.50, so it's super inexpensive. Also, this episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, Zbiotics. Now Zbiotics blew our minds a while ago. They're the first genetically modified bacteria or I should say probiotic supplement. These are probiotics that they modified to produce specific effects or results. What did they design this bacteria to do? Well, check this out. They designed this bacteria to produce an enzyme that breaks down the negative byproducts of alcohol consumption. One of the reasons why people may feel crappy the day after they drink alcohol is because of something called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde builds up in the system and you have enzymes that break it down, but if you don't have enough of the enzymes to break this down, like what can happen when you start to drink a lot of alcohol, you start to get these really crappy negative effects. You might feel inflamed, you might feel a headache, feel groggy, irritable, just genuinely not good. Well, when you take Zbiotics before you drink these genetically modified bacteria, go to your gut and start producing this enzyme that breaks down this byproduct of alcohol production. Now when you drink and you get this buildup of this particular compound, again called acetaldehyde, gotta say that right, acetaldehyde, these bacteria produce this enzyme, breaks it down, and you feel really good. So if you're like a lot of people and you're drinking a little bit more because you're at home, maybe enjoying a glass of wine or you need to relax a little bit, have Zbiotics so that you can negate some of the negative effects of your alcohol consumption. And because you are a mind pump listener, you get 10% off any of their products. So go to their website, Zbiotics.com, that's the letter Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S dot com forward slash mind pump, check out their website, their website, they have all the science, all the literature supporting what I'm talking about, and use the code mind pump for 10% off. Again, that's Zbiotics.com forward slash mind pump, get 10% off any of their Zbiotics products to help you with alcohol consumption. You know, we've been talking a lot about adding value to clients at home workouts. We talked to a lot of personal trainers, probably a good portion of our listener base, our personal trainers, and I think we all have been listening and reading the DMs. By the way, I think all three of us agree that we try our best to try and answer as many as we possibly can always. And you know, there's been a common theme I think amongst all of us of trainers trying to find ways to keep their clientele up and build value and add value to clients. How do I maintain my value to my clients when I can't meet with them and the gym is closed? And then the other most common one is from people who are not trainers, these are just people who work out and they're like, how do I keep my progress going or how do I prevent my body from sliding back because I don't have access to a lot of equipment and I'm at home. I think the mobility webinar that you're doing is brilliant. I think that's going to provide so much value. I mean, it's a full class. Well, I also think it's an example of practicing what we preach. I mean, even though mind pump is done well and scaled to where it's at, it doesn't mean that at tough times like this, we're not affected and it's real easy to get this like, you know, scared and oh shit, what do we do? You know, but revert back to adding value, adding value to people's lives and always, you know, I have a little more time because I'm at home and quarantined and we're not doing the same stuff we used to. So, you know, Doug and I got together and this has been something that's been asked a lot, like as I've talked about the mobility classes that I used to teach and in fact, we haven't ever given our audience a kind of perspective of what it looks like for us to coach somebody. We've never shown, we've never shown how we actually, we talk about how we train people, we talk about fitness obviously a lot, but nobody's ever really seen us in action. In our element. Yeah, in our element. And so, and this is not like a, I know it's a webinar. The website is mind pump webinar, but it's not Adam doing a seminar. He's literally. It's a virtual class walking you through every component of each one of those exercises, giving you all the cues and ways to kind of feel it and enhance that experience even more. It's like you're taking his class and it's what made all of us successful. It's what made Adam very well known. He teaches, he cues mobility better than anybody I've ever seen. And what I mean by that is he does it in a way to where you watch, you understand and you can feel what you're supposed to because mobility requires really, really good connection and it requires really, really good form. Otherwise it loses its value. So I think what you're doing is really good. And what I want to do with this episode is bring more value, bring even more value to people who are, who don't have access to a gym because especially for people who are advanced, you know, if you look, if you're, if you're not advanced, if you're beginner or intermediate, like, you know, if you follow a good workout at home, you're not going to see rapid declines in strength and muscle, even if you don't have access to weights. In fact, many of you might even improve because you're doing new stuff. But when you're advanced, it's really tough. If you're squatting 300 pounds at the gym, and now you're at home, you have no equipment or you have bands, like how do I keep my, my squat from dropping? How do I keep my legs from shrinking? How do I keep my muscle from atrophying? So there's a bit of a challenge there. And one of the biggest challenges is you don't have heavy resistance. You just don't have heavy resistance accessible to you. So you have to figure out other ways to, you know, the water jugs aren't really going to cut it. That's so fun. I see that a lot of that going on right now. You know, this also reminds me to have kind of the old formula of, of how we first started the podcast, we would come out, you know, pointing out things that were popular, especially if they were popular people that were sharing just crap advice. And we wouldn't just point it out. It wasn't like a, you know, calling people out by name. It was more so trying to educate the audience. And then what we would do afterwards is, you know, this is how we would do these things. And kind of how I think this, this episode will unfold for people is, you know, we've been kind of talking shit about a lot of the at home videos and stuff that we see. I mean, everybody's just like, you know, you see this lift in the couch up. You just referenced, you know, I see people like squatting with five gallon jugs and like, you know, doing all this weird shit. What they're trying to do is they're trying to mimic weights without weights, which is okay, but you're missing out on some extremely effective techniques. Well, there's, there's, there's incredible ways to be creative and smart at the same time. It's not, and that's, and right now what I see, I see, And effective. I see a lot of, I see a lot of rookie trainers just, you know, who could come up with the most creative way to do an exercise at home, you know, whether that be picking your couch up or your coffee, doing something weird on your coffee table. Using your cat. Right. Yeah. I've seen everything. I've seen everything right now. Pitbull squats. And there's, there is a more effective way to be creative with your workouts. And so that's kind of what it's inspired this, this topic today. And I'm really excited to share this because we, we organized it in a way that when you're done with the episode, we're also going to give you a specific workout to go try and do. Oh yeah. At the end of this, you'll get a full workout. We're going to, we're going to give you a workout that you can follow. But there's two things that everybody is, I don't want to say everybody, but most people are, are not even looking at. There are two training techniques. They're old. One is ancient. One is relatively new. Both of them. Okay. And this is, I'm not making this up. Both of the ones I'm about to tell you have tremendous strength and muscle building effects even when you compare them to traditional resistance training. So these are not poor substitutes. In fact, these two things that we're going to talk about today are techniques that advanced people benefit from and we've experienced them firsthand and they are backed by lots and lots of literature and science. One of them is blood flow restrictive training. So we'll talk about that. The other one is isometric training, which has actually been around for a long time, fell out of favor when equipment got invented, lots of machines and all that stuff. But if you look at the literature supporting both of these, in fact, you're going to ask yourself why you weren't doing these even when you were going to the gym, because they are, they are not poor substitutes. These will build muscle and strength even if you're somebody who's an advanced lifter, even if you're somebody who's been working out for five or 10 years on your own consistently. So let's talk about these individually, right? Let's start with BFR, otherwise known as blood flow restrictive training, otherwise known as the scientific term is called occlusion training. Now this BFR started a long time ago. It was actually discovered decades ago by somebody who was experimenting with different ways of getting working on rehab and that's actually where it became popular. Later on, athletes started seeing the effects of BFR because they'd go to their physical therapist and they'd get, you know, they'd use BFR and see the rehab effects and they started applying it to their training and then bodybuilders got their hands on it and noticed that it would add like a quarter inch to the arms. People who already are advanced. Now I was introduced to BFR late in my career. I didn't know about this until, gosh, until when we started the podcast, which was what, five years ago or something like that. And I remember, I think it was Adam and I that were talking about it. And at that time, him and I, we loved to, we were trying to compete for calf gains because both him and I are, you know, calves is not our genetic strength. Let's just put it that way. That way it's a body part. We didn't neglect it for years and then we also don't have the greatest calf building genetics. So both of us used BFR to see what would happen. I applied BFR to my calves and no joke, my calves are stubborn. They do, if I add a quarter inch to my calves, it's like a miracle. I did something crazy, right? With BFR, I added almost an inch to my calves and then I applied BFR training to my arms and my quads. My arms grew a quarter inch, which is crazy considering again that I've been working out forever. And then when I applied it to my legs, now my legs, my upper thighs respond fast anyway. That's my like, my genetic gift where my quads just blow up. I, my legs got, it got silly to the point where I actually stopped doing BFR for my legs because it was crazy. The experience I had with them personally, because when I first heard about it, I thought it was, it was, I was like, this is not way this is going to work. This is stupid. It's a new, you know, fake technique or whatever. You have to talk about why though it became so popular first in rehab. You know, one of the things when you are rehabbing a client, one of the greatest challenges is especially when, if you're dealing with athletes, right? An athlete, especially a professional athlete that's getting paid big money to be on the field or on the court every day that they're off with an injury is, is, you know, losing money, right? So getting that athlete recovered and back to their sport as fast as they possibly can, the safest way they can is the most important. So this is why there's so much money and research around this, right? So that's why we, we found this and we got to this place later on with science. And what they found was, you know, when you did the blood occlusion training, so if I had somebody, let's use it like a knee, like a knee tear, very common MCL, ACL type of tear in the knee. It's especially in sports. It's very common. A lot of people have dealt with knee injuries. After that, it's extremely tender. You're very weak. It's still kind of healing. So it's, it'd be very dangerous to take somebody who just came out of knee surgery and do a barbell squat with them right away. It's not super stable. No, it's not stable yet. They've atrophy. They've lost muscle around the knee and to do a complex movement that's loaded, heavy, very dangerous and could result in them being injured again. And that's the last thing you want to do when we're trying to recover. But then at the same time, speed is important and getting them back to where they were before. So that's where BFR came in. Yeah. And correct me itself if I'm going to explain this, you know, wrong or not. But like the way I understand it is it's a great way to mimic hypertrophy in terms of like being able to deplete this oxygen and create that, that environment for muscles to grow. And so this is a way you can do that without having to have like this heavy load or multiple reps to get you to deplete this oxygen. It's a way to kind of mimic that process. Yeah. So here's why BFR is so valuable, especially right now, you need very light weight to make this effective. This is why they liked it with rehab. Quick explanation on kind of how it works. Let's say I'm going to work my arms and I'm going to use BFR. What I would do is I would take a like a knee wrap, which a knee wrap actually works really well because it's wide and it's elastic. And then I'm going to tie it around my upper arm near my shoulder or near my armpit. And I tie it around to what I start to feel pressure. Now you don't want to tie it off so tightly that you literally cut off circulation, but you want to tie it off tight enough to where it prevents muscle venous outflow. It prevents blood flowing out my muscle, but it doesn't prevent blood flowing in. So now I'm getting this imbalance. More blood is flooding into the muscle, especially as I'm exercising it and but less blood is flowing out. I'm giving myself an enhanced pump, but also while I'm doing that, I am reducing oxygen to the muscle tremendously. Now, why is this important? Okay, your fast twitch muscle fibers are the ones that are responsible for strength and power. Your slow twitch muscle fibers are the ones that are responsible for endurance. Endurance requires a lot of oxygen. Strength does not. Strength requires, you know, you're moving anaerobically. You're using ATP and other sources of energy. So this is why if you are exerting tons of power, you don't last long. If you want to last long, you got to go slower and exert less power, and then you can last over a period of time. So when you tie off the arms, you're reducing oxygen to the muscle. And what this does is it forces the fast twitch muscle fibers to do all the work, even though you're lifting a very, very light weight. So using myself as an example, I mean, if I'm strong and I'm going heavy, I mean, I could do decent curls with 45, 50 pound dumbbells. I could do 10 decent reps doing that. And I'd get a great workout doing that. If I tie off my arms, 10 to 15 pounds, and I am, that's it. And you'll know, once you do this, you'll do the reps and it feels light as the oxygen starts to deplete, which happens very quickly, you get this insane burn in the muscle. Yes, that lactate burn. Oh, right. Like, so this is one of those ways you'll get there a lot faster than you would even, you know, lift and weights and like having to go through all those reps just to get to that point where you feel that burn really start to sit in. And now that's why it's great for rehab. You have an injury. I can't have somebody, you know, do a leg or arm exercise or whatever with a normal load that would stimulate muscle growth because they're injured. But I can use 20% of a normal load with blood flow restriction with occlusion so that the muscle now responds as if the person is using heavy load. So this is perfect for right now. You're stuck at home and you have bands and maybe your bands, you know, you could sit there and do a hundred curls with the bands, try doing it occluded, try doing the arms territory. Next thing you know, you do 30 reps, the first set, then do 15 and 10, the following sets. And it feels like you're curling up, you know, 200 pounds like you can barely and the burn is intense and the muscles almost don't know the difference. That's the thing. They almost don't know the difference. The fast twitch muscle fibers get worked like when you lift heavy weight and the, and again, the results are exceptional. Again, this was done, this was first observed back in the mid 1960s. There was a Japanese researcher who experimented with this and he actually, one thing that he noticed was when he sat in a kneeling position for long periods of times, his calves would get really pumped. So that kneeling position for him naturally occluded his calves and he noticed his calves would get really pumped and then they'd actually kind of build a little bit and he thought this is really strange. So then he started doing experiments with various techniques and he found that when he did this to people that they built muscle like when they were working out. Here's some of the other benefits of this kind of training. It creates less damage to your body. So you can actually apply it more frequently to your body. So I could do, you know, a heavy, hard bicep workout, you know, maybe two days a week where I'm really, really pushing it. That's about as far as I'd want to go. BFR, I could apply three, four days a week to my biceps. And I'm telling you, this is true now. You're going to get similar results to when you're doing your heavy exercises. That's how effective BFR is. Here's the other wonderful thing about BFR. We're in a situation where we may want to maintain a very strong, healthy immune system. Well, training really, really hard, although if you're fit and you do it right over time, it builds a strong immune system. In the short term, you'd notice a dip in immune system. This is why if you're fighting off an illness and then you train real hard, you're probably going to get the illness. It's going to hit you, you know, full blast. Because BFR is, it simulates intensity, it simulates heavy weight, and you get the similar results in terms of muscle growth. You don't hammer the body in the same way. It's far less damaging to the body. It also causes some really interesting things to happen in terms of hormones. I mean, when they do studies on, and you can find these studies, I'm going to actually look them up right now. These studies are, I'm not the only one that's, you know, these are- This is some of the stuff that I saw Ben Greenfield touting recently. So I saw him talking about this on a video maybe a week or two ago. He was sharing this about, you know, it was probably him who really sparked this for me recently, because I wasn't even thinking that way with BFR that, hey, this is, and we've kind of talked about this, right? We've told our audience already that, hey, you know, this is a time where your overall health is most important. Building a bunch of muscle right now, even if that's what the questions are around, shouldn't be your number one in priority. It should be taking care of yourself and staying healthy. And that's what he was making the case that, hey, you know, this is not the time to hammer and stress your body. If you're stressed about work, you're stressed about being at home all day with your kids, you got all this other stress, and then you go hammer yourself in the garage and kill yourself in there. And that's where you get sick. And so he was making this case for, you know, this is a great time to really start to include BFR. And I agree 100%. It's a hack. This is like a hack right now. Like, okay, I don't want to stress my immune system, but I want to maintain my gains. I still want to build muscle. I still want to, you know, feel the way I feel when I go to the gym. Well, enter this advanced kind of training technique. Again, it's only relatively recently become popular among strength athletes, but it's been used for rehab for a very long time. And we've all used it and experienced significant results. Growth hormone release you see after training. So anytime you work out, we notice if the workout is effective, we tend to notice a spike in growth hormone. Well, check this out. BFR training studies show will release 170% higher levels of growth hormone than traditional resistance training. So you actually get a greater spike in growth hormone from BFR training than you do from traditional resistance training. Now, growth hormone isn't necessarily like testosterone. It's not this huge driver of muscle growth, but it's excellent in its protective abilities. So it helps with your muscle collagen, your tendons. It's very good for recovery and rehab. And in combination with hormones like testosterone, it can be an effective muscle builder. Again, BFR raises that more than traditional resistance training. Here's something else that's interesting. They can actually look at how genes are being expressed through different methods of training. BFR has positive effects on insulin like growth factor, mTOR and myostatin. These are all things that when we measure and we see the positive impact on these things that these signal the body to build muscle. It's very strange like when you have someone use BFR training with 20% load and you compare that to heavy training and you take them into a laboratory and don't tell the scientists who did what and you had to measure all the signals. They're going to look at both of them and be like, it's kind of hard to decipher. It looks like both of them sent this really loud muscle building signal. So it's exceptionally effective and it's something that again you could do at home with bands or really light dumbbells or jugs. This is now jugs of water now become valuable. How much does a jug of water wear? 10 pounds, 15 pounds? What am I going to do? 100,000 curls? Do BFR with that? Now you've got yourself in a good weight. Another reason why I really love this conversation right now is I bet a big portion of our audience doesn't even know that we wrote a BFR guide like four years ago. The reason why we don't push it really hard on the show is because we would never, our integrity, we're not going to sell it like it's this magical thing that's going to be, it's better than traditional weight training. But this is a great example though, because what we do know about the science behind it, the support, how valuable it can be. Especially now. That's my point. This is a great, and this is what I met by cracking on the masses that are just kind of throwing all these creative, weird exercises. The reason why I crack up about it is just because I know this. I know damn well, I've trained enough clients, I've trained enough clients that I need them to do homework and stuff like that. None of my fucking clients picking the couch up all weird or going to get a five gallon jug of water and hugging it and squatting. They ain't doing none of that stuff. They're not doing it. And if they do do it, they're going to do it one time and that's it. They're not going to follow, it's like a novelty thing. It is. And it's more silly than it is realistic that they're going to follow it. And not to mention, like you said, how many times am I going to have to curl milk jugs in order to get a good pump or actually train my biceps well when there's stuff that you can do like isometrics and BFR that are incredible, that it's supported by research to show how great it is. And here is a good place for this. This is where I would take a client and write a workout very similar to the one that we wrote for today's episode. Totally. So I want to tell you kind of how to do it. And of course, Adam's right, we do have a guide. It's called the occlusion training guide that kind of breaks down how to do it. But I'll explain a little bit here on the podcast. If you have knee wraps, if you have any kind of elastic wrap supportive type wrap, you can even use long if you have a really, really long sturdy pieces of gauze, wrap those if you want to work your biceps and triceps or your forearms, you wrap them around your arm right under your shoulder tight enough to where you could feel the pressure, but not so tight where you're just like, Oh, I can't barely move. Then you do your exercises. And the way it's broken down. And remember at the end of the episode, we'll give lay this all out for you. But the way you typically want to do this is you want to do your first set about 30 reps, then you rest for about 30 seconds or so. And then you go 15 reps, and you repeat this about five times. So it goes 30 reps, rest 15 reps, rest 15 reps, now I'm not joking here, grab a weight that is light. You will be blown away at how fast you get fatigued and how little you can do. It's gonna really burn. It's fire. Give it a chance. It's very painful. You could do this for your legs as well. And the way you would tie them off is up near the groin around the leg. You could do it for the calves below the knee, but you can actually just tie up above the leg. So it is a little bit limiting in terms of like, you know, isolating arms, isolating your legs and limbs only limbs only. It's not going to be good for chest back and you know, these these gross motor movements, you know, in terms of that. So that's why we we also wanted to bring up another technique that's, you know, sort of a lost art that that is like massively effective. And it has like multiple studies to prove, you know, just how much you gain strength. And you don't even realize you're gaining all this strength without any weight applied. This is just the simple technique of isometric training. Oh, isometrics, you know, if you look at the history, this is something that I really, really enjoyed reading about when you look at the history of muscle building and strength building. And one thing that I realized, I probably 10 to 12 years into my career was that, you know, a lot of the information that I would get on advanced muscle building and fat burning training was coming from these bodybuilders and athletes that were, you know, they were on anabolic steroids or they were paid by publications to kind of, you know, push people in a certain direction. So there was good information, but some of it was like, ah, it didn't really apply as well. When I read the old stuff, when I looked way back in the, you know, the way that they trained in the 1910s, 20s, 30s, and even the 40s before anabolic steroids before protein powder, before creatine, you know, these guys and girls were, they were, they were just doing what works and they would write books about what works. This is when I learned, you know, full body training and frequency and I also, by the way, these guys blew me away with their feats of strength. Like Eugene Sando is a good example. This guy could do a one arm bent press with 300 pounds. I don't know, I don't know any bodybuilders that could do that. Now you're talking about 190 pound shredded man who was able to lift this to tremendous amount of weight. They got insanely good with muscle recruitment. Oh, and this is one of the massive benefits to isometric training. I mean, they've shown in studies in German studies that you gain 5% strength increase in one week. Wow. And it's crazy, like, so there's other things that involve with the speed of muscles. Muscles can only move so fast. And so this is the force velocity curve. So this is a principle where basically you can't, you can't move your muscles fast under a lot of load. And now what isometrics provides, there's no load. And so basically I can, I can squeeze and recruit as much maximal force as possible. And this is what really allows for you to really develop like an even higher amplitude of strength. You recruit the most muscle fibers you'll recruit is when your muscles are pushing the load that they can't lift and they can't move it. So if I'm doing a curl and it's heavy and I'm lifting it, the my body will never recruit the maximal number of muscle fibers because it found the right amount to lift the weight. Now the only time your muscle fibers where you get the max recruitment is when you're pushing against an object that's not moving. Your body is literally turning them all on studies show that isometrics actually do that. And what happens when you practice isometrics is you learn your body actually learns how to recruit more muscle fibers easier. And where I was going with the eight with the old strong men and strength athletes back in the day, all of them use isometrics heavily. It was actually an extremely popular form of training. It only fell out of favor when gyms and equipment became a thing because with isometrics, you don't need equipment. So why would we push something that requires no equipment? Right, your best strength coaches will advocate for still to this day 100%. There's not a good strength coach out there that will tell you, oh, isometrics are a waste of time or a joke. All of them implemented into their routines already. You know, I had to shout out one of our buddies, coach Eugene tail. He has been posting I think I've seen at least three or four different, great isometric exercises where he's just using a towel. And that that's an example to me. That's how I even before I got to meet Eugene, I knew he was a good coach because I can see how his brain operates. He knows everyone's locked inside the house right now. They don't have access to a gym. So what are some things that he can really add value to the people's lives that are following him and paying attention to him. And he knows like we do the research that supports isometric training. So what is he showing? He's not the guy who's in there showing, you know, doing skull crushers with the couch or doing weird exercises and movements, just to be creative with your home shit that you have right now. Stay effective. Right. There's ways to do that 100. And I'll tell you what, if you've never done an isometric workout, not the right way, you have no idea what you're in. Oh, yeah, you have no idea if it's that's in, you know, here's here's one of the critiques of isometrics has always been, well, the strength gains that you get in isometrics are only specific to the exact position that you're in. So in other words, if I'm pushing with a with a good isometric position in a half squat, I'm only going to get good at that half squat. Well, that's actually not true. Studies show that the strength actually goes 10 degrees outside of the range of motion, both up and down. And then you get strength gains even further than that, it just becomes diminishing the further you move out. In other words, if I do an isometric squat at 90 degrees, I'm going to get the same strength gains at 80 degrees and at 100, you know, 100 degrees. And then it's going to be diminishing as I move away, but I'm still getting all those strength gains. So how do you apply isometrics? You move into through different positions and apply the tension in different positions. And you'll find again, tremendous strength gains. One of the most popular at home workout programs of all time was Charles Atlas's Dynamic Tension. He used to sell this through comic books, and it was all based around this. And you know, I remember there were before and afters of people, then this is back in the forties and fifties, but people would get tremendous results and they never used weights at all. Yeah, it was 100% isometrics. This is a technique that's been long lost. There's a there's a martial art. Maybe Doug can look it up. Look at martial art most famous for for isometrics. I want to say it's like quachukimbo or something like that. I don't know. There's a there's a famous Tai Chi. There's a famous martial art that is that is known for its isometrics and it's and for and that's what they they present is its muscle building effect while you're also doing these like probably there's a lot of Shaolin monk that they utilize the you know that and then Bruce Lee obviously made it famous too as he would use it in between sets and would you know use these isometric poses to really enhance the strength. Bruce Lee was a huge advocate of isometric training which he learned from the old time strength athletes and you know Bruce Lee of course was a small smaller man but he was the first muscular action movie action figure that before Bruce Lee there was no shredded muscular you know action person in movies that the general the way that they used to look back there was just kind of a sturdy looking dude you know tough guy right then comes Bruce Lee lat spread he would do that famous lat spread where you'd hear the bones cracking you know when you do the thing yeah and he wasn't a big guy but he was shredded and muscular especially for a guy of his genetics and of course the guy was totally natural people don't realize Bruce Lee actually inspired a lot of bodybuilders flex wheeler became a bodybuilder because of Bruce Lee so Bruce Lee was this really shredded muscular look at some of his old pictures in these old kung fu movies all natural doesn't have great super muscle building genetics he's obviously a slight you know kung fu fighter or whatever or you can do fighter or whatever but he had this incredible physique that he built through a combination of training techniques and isometrics was huge for him and he found it made him extremely powerful in his martial arts yeah to kind of reiterate some of the points that we've mentioned for bfr training in terms of like it being safe so you know the thing about like always loading the body and loading the joints inevitably I mean you have to you have to go back in and really reinforce the joints like on the off time with mobility drills and all these things to try and keep the upkeep so everything is you know reinforced properly so that way you know you can sustain the that amount of load whereas with something like isometric train you can utilize maximal force and then let off and there's there's a lot less ramifications to that and the overall damage is way less in the turnover so you could actually like you know come back and then do a workout just as intense you know the following day with less damage I think that isometrics are just it's a hard thing to to sell to the average person because it just it doesn't seem to make logical sense I mean most people seem fancy it well yeah that's what it is right and and I think I even had a hard time as a trainer I think explaining it in my early career like I knew that it's been around forever in the value of it but I honestly I didn't use it like I started using it later on in my career and I think a lot of that just had big I couldn't articulate to my clients like how why this is so valuable and so I really started to grasp the the the role and the importance of like the central nervous system and what's going on a neurological level when we exercise and I get I get into this a tiny bit in the the mobility webinar that I that I did because that's very similar like when you're we're working on mobility and we're trying to find a new range of motion there's there's a neurological thing that's happening right what happens is we we we lose this good communication from our brain to our muscles like we just we forget that before they move or do anything there's something that happens in the brain first the brain tells the muscles to move and do that and so when you train isometrics you're training that portion of the exercise also not just the stimulation that the muscles are getting but also the ability for you to connect from the brain to the muscles neurotransmitters right and for it to be solidify a really strong pathway and why that's so important when you then go back and do traditional weight training is you now have the ability to connect to the muscles that you want to develop better than anyone this is why and now you've mentioned this Sal many times before on the show why bodybuilders are so good at being able to connect to a muscle because they do ice probably more than anybody else when you look at the average gym population bodybuilders use isometric training more than anyone else whether they know it or not they call posing right yeah they know how to isolate they don't know how to flex their lats they know how to isolate their chest how to make the upper chest look more defined they feel their muscles more yes and and look you're talking about the connection again i'll go back to what i just said moving an unmovable load or or tensing and creating lots of tension through isometrics is one of the easiest ways to recruit the most amount of muscle fibers that's when your body and your your your neurological system is firing all those muscle fibers you don't lose that by the way that's a skill that you actually get better at so what happens then when you go back to the gym and you're lifting weights here's what happens you feel way more solid i don't know how it's better to explain it you're more connected you know uh somebody messaged me the other day about old man strength remember we talked about that before yeah where you know this is you feel that like in a handshake right away yeah it's a funny term right that that guys we used to describe why they're why they're they're you know 50 year old uncle can you know it's true though can kick their ass in wrestling even though that you know they go to the gym and they can outlift them or whatever i remember this as an 18 year old kid you know if i would go work out you know in the gym with my uncle um you know i'd lift more weight to them but then we would you know arm wrestle or shake hands or wrestle on the ground like this dude is way stronger than me what the hell's going on they have they've been in their body longer they have better connections to their muscle they're more solid okay isometric training trains that force then when you go do your bench press or your squat or your overhead press what ends up happening is you just feel like you are active you feel like the muscles are controlled you feel like you're stable you're strong there's also speculation when you talk when you read these old articles of of bodybuilders what they would all say about isometric training because remember bodybuilding posing on stage has been around since the 1930s or so right 1930s started to get a little bit popular and what they would say is that the isometric training made their muscles look denser that would actually make their muscles look harder and i think that's because they learned how to recruit oh yeah muscle fibers i mean your body has natural governor governing systems in it to to protect your joints to protect your ligaments to protect you know your muscles from getting torn and so like when you're going to lift weights you already have like a sort of operating system there you know that allows only so much for you to produce just enough force to be able to move this object isometrics help you to stretch that limitation even further so now i have an excess of muscle fibers now that i can add into this movement this is why i i love uh sal you're the first person i ever heard say this i've probably repeated it more times than you've even said it now because i think even though it's an an oversimplification of a very complex thing we're talking about i think that's what you need to do for the average person to really grasp what values you're getting from what we're talking about and that's your amplifier speaker analogy that you used to give all the time that i love to share because the way i look at it when we're talking about this everybody thinks about lifting weights all the time and sets reps exercises and that and they're all there and all that kind of falls under this category of like think talking about the speaker you know and how great the speakers are muscles yeah that's the muscles right the muscles are the speakers the amplifier is the is the cns and by by training your training isometrics you're investing in a better amplifier you're investing in a more powerful amplifier you're training to have a better amplifier and that combined with good speakers builds an incredible stereo system well this is why isometric by the way we put a lot of isometric training in our maps anywhere program because we know its value but this is why isometric training combines so well to bfr isometric training really does a phenomenal job of training the amplifier of training the central nervous system bfr does a phenomenal job of training the speakers and train the muscle you combine those two you're covered you actually have a very effective if you do this right okay you have a very effective muscle building workout combination that requires very little or no resistance if you have bands if you have a broomstick and then you just have your body you've got everything you need to combine isometrics with bfr oh besides the thing to tie off your arms and legs that's it that's all you need you need nothing else try this out and watch what happens so i think what do you guys think give them the work impact high effect all right so so here's a deal we'll start with legs this is a full body workout okay so you could follow this whole this entire workout or you can do what we've been recommending which is you could take this whole workout and divide it up into two workouts throughout the day so you do 30 minutes in the morning 30 minutes at night doesn't matter which one but i found since when i'm stuck at home i like to divide things up a little bit so let's start with legs okay isometric lunge this is going to be your isometric exercise now with the isometric lungs what you're going to do is you're going to get into a lunge position you're going to go slowly down into the lunge now go down to where your knee is hovering above the floor and then hold intense your entire body but especially your quads hamstrings and glutes your goal is to tense as hard as you possibly can with your legs without moving your body you want to stay stationary and you want to fire the shit out of those squeezing your entire body down there at the bottom to really maximize that recruitment process that's it and then do that hold that for about two to five seconds then come up give yourself a few seconds and then repeat this you want to do this five times so that's one set five times now if at the end of this five reps of these this isometric squeeze if you feel like you didn't really do much you weren't squeezing harder sure fault this is that's what's great about isometrics is you control the intensity of this and this is something I tried to get across in my you know my webinar when we're going through the mobility drills is I mean I was sweating my ass off it's mobility exercises it's not even we're not even talking about hard isometric training like this just but you control that and the more intense you do it the more you recruit so you got to think about that while you're doing it that's right so try doing between two to four sets for for this exercise and it's five reps each leg again you're going to go down hold that bottom position but don't just hold when you're at the bottom squeeze as hard as you can all the muscles you're trying to target hold that for two to five seconds come up give yourself catch your breath and then repeat five reps again you want to do about two to four sets I think three is probably perfect for most people next is chest chest is the ISO squeeze this is a great exercise this is what you do grab a broomstick that you can hold at arm's length in front of your body with your hands outside of your shoulders squeeze this stick with your hands and then drive your hands together like you're trying to get your hands to touch each other now don't slide on the stick okay the goal is not to slide on the stick but you want to elevate your shoulders up right you want to maintain good posture with this retract your shoulders depress your shoulders down really squeeze you know as much as you can to really fill your way into your chest from your shoulders and when we're just so you those that are listening right now going oh shit this is a lot of trying to scramble take notes Justin and Doug are going to shoot these videos so you're going to have these videos we'll post it on Instagram when this episode is live so you'll be able to go back to our demonstrate all these for you after right so as Sal's walking through and giving you your cues don't freak out or be scrambling that you you don't understand if anything sounds complicated we're going to shoot a video of each of these exercises and Justin will go through all the great cues and we'll give Jackie this so she could put the actual workout in the show notes I think that works out right Doug that's minepumppodcast.com you click on the episode go to the bottom you'll see show notes so this is all written down so do that with your chest hold that squeeze for as hard as you can for five seconds do three sets of that by the way you want to rest about 30 seconds to a minute in between each one of these sets so do that five seconds squeeze release give you do it again do that for five times that's one set so five second hard squeezes do that five times that's one set do that for three sets for the chest now when you go to the back prone cobra we have lots of videos on youtube I think we've shown that exercise several times on our youtube channel with prone cobra same exact thing get into that position squeeze your back and your body as hard as you can hold that squeeze for five seconds come out of the position go back and do it and do it again do that five reps for three sets for shoulders there's something called isometric shoulder retraction by the way all these exercises for those of you that have maps anywhere they're all in the maps anywhere program so for the isometric shoulder retraction just like you did with the chest where you have the the broomstick in front of you but this time instead of squeezing your hands together what I want you to do is pull your shoulder blades back together so like you're squeezing your shoulder blades back together and then pull your hands apart as hard as you can in that isometric position again the tension you create yourself that's what's going to make this effective hold that for five seconds as hard as you can give yourself a second or two repeat it five reps three sets for this exercise for core there's something called hollow body hold this is again we'll have this filmed this is where you're laying on the floor with your body arms extended out your legs extended out now what you want to do is you want to create a you with your body so crunch up you look like a banana you look like a big like a curved canoe right hold that squeeze in your abs as hard as you can tense up your entire body again five second hold do that for five reps do three sets okay now we're gonna go to the BFR so you're done with all the isometric stuff now we're going BFR here's what you're gonna do tie off both arms grab yourself a lightweight or a band do 30 reps first get the biceps to to really burn really pump give yourself about uh you know I don't know 15 20 second rest then do 15 reps 15 to 20 second rest 15 reps 15 20 second rest 15 reps so the total is four to five sets so you're going 30 reps then you're aiming for 15 each time rest in between of them in between them for about 20 to 30 seconds then go to triceps do the same thing with a band press down just like a tricep press down put your band over a door or if you have a door attachment you could do that squeeze the triceps at the bottom same thing 30 reps 15 reps 15 reps 15 reps 30 second rest in between you are going to feel an insane burn totally normal just try to deal with it when you take the bands off or the the things around your arms off you're probably going to have the craziest pump you've ever had in your entire life with your arms now we're going to move to calves you can do the same thing with your calves you want to tie off right above your calf below your knee so that you feel some pressure in your calves now you want to do body weight calf raises off the off of a stair or a step or stand on something so your ankles can your heels can go down a little bit again 30 reps rest 15 reps rest 15 reps rest 15 set reps rest you want to do a total of about five sets of this you're going to feel an insane burn again take the bit the bands off your legs and let them chill out and see what happens also on our show notes at the minepumppodcast.com jack you also link over we did a youtube video sal you know i did a youtube video on how to do bfr also oh how to put the bands on so how to put on the band so if you're kind of wondering what's that look like or how tight we kind of cover all that in the youtube so you have access to all this justin's going to shoot videos so if you don't own the anywhere program and you don't have bfr because if obviously if you have the bfr guide and you have anywhere you already have great demos already in there and you just got to put the programming together otherwise justin will shoot these videos so everybody has them and then we also have youtube video demos of this now here's the deal if you want to learn so of all of this the more difficult thing to kind of like adam was saying is kind of figure out really how to do bfr or occlusion training properly so we have an occlusion training guide that really really breaks it down now normally we sell it for $27 it's a very inexpensive guide but you're going to get half off 50% off we're going to do a 50% off code for people who listen to this episode so it's $13.50 you can find that at mapsbfr.com that's mapsbfr.com and then the code for the 50% off is bfr50 no space for the discount also you can find the three of us on instagram you can find justin at mind pump justin you can find me at mind pump sal and adam at mind pump adam